Private and open-source alternatives to Confluence
7 wikis and knowledge bases rated against the same public privacy criteria as Confluence, with our picks first.
Why look for an alternative?
- Open source: no. Closed source.
- No trackers or telemetry: no. Atlassian and its advertising and analytics partners use cookies and other tracking technologies on its sites and services.
- No ads or data sales: partial. Funded by subscriptions with no ads in the product, but the policy allows targeted advertising and sharing identifiers with third-party advertising providers.
- Independent audit: no. No independent audit is published.
- Security headers: partial. Grade B (70/100+)
See the full Confluence rating.
The alternatives
BookStack Grade B
Self-hosted wiki platform that organizes documentation into shelves, books, chapters and pages. Built with PHP and Laravel, with a WYSIWYG and Markdown editor, search and role-based permissions.
Based in the United Kingdom (Five Eyes). BookStack scores 80 out of 100 (grade B) on the wikis and knowledge bases criteria. It meets 3 of 4 criteria: open source, no trackers or telemetry and no ads or data sales.
MediaWiki Grade C
Wiki software developed by the Wikimedia Foundation that runs Wikipedia. Self-hosted PHP application with page history, templates, a visual editor and a large extension ecosystem.
Based in the United States (Five Eyes). MediaWiki scores 65 out of 100 (grade C) on the wikis and knowledge bases criteria. It meets 2 of 4 criteria: open source and no ads or data sales.
XWiki Grade C
Self-hosted enterprise wiki written in Java, with structured data, scripting and an extension system for building wiki applications. Developed by XWiki SAS and its community.
Based in France (Nine Eyes). XWiki scores 65 out of 100 (grade C) on the wikis and knowledge bases criteria. It meets 2 of 4 criteria: open source and no ads or data sales.
Wiki.js Grade D
Self-hosted wiki built on Node.js, with Markdown, visual and HTML editors, Git storage sync, full-text search and many authentication options.
Wiki.js scores 50 out of 100 (grade D) on the wikis and knowledge bases criteria. It meets 2 of 4 criteria: open source and no ads or data sales.
Outline Grade D
Team knowledge base and wiki with real-time collaborative editing, Markdown support and integrations such as Slack. Available as a hosted service or self-hosted.
Based in the United States (Five Eyes). Outline scores 44 out of 100 (grade D) on the wikis and knowledge bases criteria. It meets 3 of 8 criteria: open source, no ads or data sales and security headers.
Docmost Grade F
Self-hostable collaborative wiki and documentation tool with real-time editing, spaces, permissions, comments and diagram support. Also offered as a paid cloud service.
Docmost scores 35 out of 100 (grade F) on the wikis and knowledge bases criteria. It meets 1 of 4 criteria: no ads or data sales.
DokuWiki Grade F
Self-hosted wiki software written in PHP that stores pages in plain text files, so it needs no database. Includes access control, authentication connectors and a large plugin collection.
DokuWiki scores 30 out of 100 (grade F) on the wikis and knowledge bases criteria. It meets 1 of 4 criteria: open source.